This piece is partly inspired by English nursery rhyme, Little Bo Peep. "Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep and doesn't know where to find them". Here, Bo Peep is older. She has found her sheep, but they have long died and left their bones behind. This piece is about drawing on the past in order to fuel the future, the ropes extending from Bo Peep's head and in to her environment symbolising intimacy and connection with the present. Bo Peep's expression is one of acceptance of what once was and now is. There is nothing to regain or to revitalise, only to look forward to.

Antonio Moriones points wisely, that the image of Little Bo Peep is taken from a portrait of the chorus girl and artists' model Evelyn Nesbit by Gertrude Käsebier, c.1903. You can see the photo below in the "References" section.

She began her education at a Waldorf school that her parents built on their farm and it was here that her artistic inclinations were fostered. Surrounded by her mother and father’s extensive collection of art books, she became enchanted at an early age by the work of the Old Masters, Matthias Grünewald, Ilya Repin and the illustrations by H. J. Ford and Ivan Bilibin, often losing herself in their otherworldly imagery.

"Mujer real con vestido irreal II / Real Woman in Unreal Dress II"

In 2007, Hardie held her debut solo exhibition at Synergy Gallery in Melbourne, which sold out on opening night. Her work has since been exhibited throughout Australia, in Europe and the US and featured in numerous publications.

«It has taken me years to build a habit, like going to the gym…not that I do that of course (laughs). It’s just a matter of time and practice, but don’t expect that it’s going to be easy, because it’s not. Just be okay with the drudgery. I find the first half of a piece of work is like climbing uphill, I get distracted. But if you put in the hours, then the hours are done, and you can see it come to life and before you know it, you are flowing downhill. It’s always a battle in the beginning, so I find having a structure helpful, starting at 9 o’clock, having a lunch break, like a normal routine.»

This piece is an ode to Death. The pure whites of the old man's eyes symbolise death's ability to strip away the outer shell, and help us focus on or 'see' what is real and everlasting. To reveal what is under the surface - this to me is the beauty and the gift of death. This piece was created over approximately 80 hours by applying many fine layers of pen and ink on cotton paper.

«...I generally don’t describe it [my work] like that because the word “spiritual” has all these weird connotations. It’s spiritual in that I meditate, but I don’t attach myself to any religion as such. My motivation in my work, all these stories and myths, serve to express the message of the artwork, which is that I want people to know who they are. I want them to stop and say “fuck” or “oh wow”, like that moment when you see a sunset and stop for a moment.»

«I know people are competitive, and if you want to be “the best” then you are always going to have rivals, there is always going to be envy. But if you want to connect with your audience, and give something to them, then you’re not competing with anyone. Because I’m a unique person, I’m offering something unique, and it’s a certain flavour that comes out of my work.»

«Through my work, I present my personal vision of the polarities of the human experience. With death as a catalyst for transformation and new life appearing as a central theme, each piece acts as a symbolic reflection of a psychological state, designed to facilitate in the viewer a deeper experience of the connection with the part of us that is beyond thought, the part that is always free. Regardless of the content, this is what I seek for my work to evoke in the viewer: an experience of freedom, and in the experience of freedom, the knowing that we are enough.»

Black and white forms my palette. They represent the duality of our natures, the dark and the light, and I seek to make both visible. Using a Micron .005 ink pen on cotton rag, my drawings are built up in many fine layers. I relish working in detail and a single piece can take months to create. While my methods are labour intensive, I aim to minimise evidence of this, so that the viewer is allowed the greatest opportunity to experience the essence – or the message – of the creation, without getting distracted by or lost in its extremities.

My influences include the work of Ernst Fuchs, Zdzislaw Beksinski, Vali Myers, Vania Zouravliov and Albín Brunovský. I undertake through my own works a personal research into their techniques as a means of facilitating my own expression. Their fascination in exploring the darker, more mysterious sides of the human psyche, their performances preciseness and the importance given to detail and precision, are apparent in my pictures. My work is also informed by the black and white photography of Paolo Roversi and Joseph Sudek, by Integral Philosophy / Psychology and the rich imagery inherent in fairy tales.

Albín Brunovský was a painter, graphic artist, lithographer, illustrator and pedagogue born in 1935, considered one of the greatest Slovak painters of the 20th century.

Brunovský started his early career in art by working on stage set and poster design. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava under Prof. Vincent Hložník from 1955 to 1961. The Hloznik School was well known for its high artistic and technical preparation in graphic arts and its humanist perspective.

For the founder, as for many of his students, Goya’s great graphic cycle "The Horrors of War" served as a pattern or model. Brunovský himself lectured at that Academy from 1966 to 1990. In 1981 he was appointed a professor, creating his own engraving school several years later. Brunovský's work often mirrored that of the modern movement, citation art. Brunovský was also the designer of the last series of Czechoslovak banknotes. His illustrations were primarily for children's books.

Over the course of his career, Brunovsky experimented with various graphic techniques and was highly influenced in his subject matter by poetry and literature, as well, of course, as by other artists.

Henry Justice Ford, was a prolific and successful English artist and illustrator born in 1860, active from 1886 through to the late 1920s. Sometimes known as H. J. Ford or Henry J. Ford, he came to public attention when he provided the numerous beautiful illustrations for Andrew Lang's Fairy Books, which captured the imagination of a generation of British children and were sold worldwide in the 1880s and 1890s.

In 1892, Ford began exhibiting paintings of historical subjects and landscapes at the Royal Academy of Art exhibitions. However it was his illustrations for such books as The Arabian Nights Entertainments (Longmans 1898), Kenilworth (TC & EC Jack 1900) and A School History of England' by Charles Fletcher and Rudyard Kipling (Clarendon Press 1911) that provided Ford with both income and fame.

This is an open art blog, so you could find images eventually offensive or umconfortable.

If you're an artist and find here images of your art you want to be removed, just tell me and I'll do it immediately. I try to ask for permission always if artist is alive and there's a way to contact, bot not always is possible and there are things I think worth to be known.

In any case, the copyrights of all the images contained in this blog, except where noted, belong to the artists or the legal owners of such rights, and have been published nonprofit and for the only purpose of make the works known to the general public.

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